This is... not a joke? https://www.isec.org/
0 Boosts
0 Likes
They've been a thing for almost 20 years now.
Fine for speculative engineering. Very far from any actual application.
@sundogplanets
I’m sure it will be fine. No elevator has ever broken down before, or got stuck, so nothing to worry about./s
@sundogplanets
That one little line about "suitable tether material " is the big sticking point. All the science fiction i read as a teenager never considered impacts with a bazillion satellites.
@sundogplanets wow the faq is a jawdropping masterpiece of wishful thinking..
@sundogplanets Not really an answer, but https://xkcd.com/697/
@sundogplanets I think there's a valid distinction to be made between "not a joke" and "the people doing it don't understand that it's a joke".
@sundogplanets “Three new Space Elevator songs!”
That doesn’t help to convince me that it’s serious, I must confess.
Well, they WERE on the fediverse, though their last post seems to indicate that is no longer the case.
I'm guessing that Starlink and our progression along in Kessler Syndrome has taken a space elevator off the table? Or are these structures so magical that they are impervious to hypervelocity impacts?
@sundogplanets Simple solution: put some strong bumpers on the tether at Starlink altitude so when Starlink satellites bump into it, they just react like bumper cars, or perhaps like a ball in a pinball machine (the tether would need bells and flashing lights to complete the effect 😄 . The Startlink constellation would then become an unpredictable collection of bumper cars going in any/every direction :-)
@sundogplanets protected by Exciting New Toy armor??
@sundogplanets no no they just put a little umbrella on it
@sundogplanets They probably watched the Star Bridge collapse sequence from "Foundation" ...
I mean, lots of SciFi novels have space elevators. Just one or two minor details still to work out, for example:
“The manufacture of tether-quality material for a space elevator still needs more development..."
I'm curious how they expect to lift the elevator up and down. Maybe there are two that counterbalance each other, like the streetcars in San Francisco?
@sundogplanets Not to be spoilery, but the TV version of Foundation makes me *really* question the wisdom of space elevators.
@sundogplanets you're not speaking at this conference????
@vapaad No no no no no
And if I was, my talk would be "why Starlink will crash into your space elevator"
@sundogplanets @vapaad I would make time to watch that talk. 👍
@sundogplanets “humanity's most important missions”? Oh for fucks sake… give me a break.
@sundogplanets these days, the frontier between jokes and reality is too blurred to tell
@sundogplanets
oooh "a happy vertical people transporter"
I’m given the understand it’s real and there’s a Japanese firm that’s pursuing it.
They’ve done the number of developmental projects.
The main constraint, of course, is material that can handle that kind of load. What I do know from a video I watched is supposedly a project to build an elevator on the moon is discussed because the gravity there is low enough that materials we have today can handle it.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell Building a space elevator on the moon runs into the slightly huge physics problem that a stable "lunosynchronous orbit" doesn't exist...
I would hazard to guess that’s a direct consequence to the fact that the physics don’t work out as a satellite of planet Earth
@sundogplanets @GhostOnTheHalfShell I think maybe backing into this from a different angle is helpful (or at least, good for thought experiments):
which popular technologies from science fiction, that serve as infrastructure for space economies and activity, might
1) actually be feasible, and
2) be worth pursuing (in that they would drive outcomes of broad societal/scientific benefit, with manageable downsides) ?
@sundogplanets @GhostOnTheHalfShell and 3) what kinds of technological dependencies need to be solved first? (In the case of space elevators, metamaterials at least, and probably orbital manufacturing as well)
@sundogplanets Look there are only so many million $ purses that rich folks can buy so the need something else to spend their money on. It's just a long shot bet like a lottery ticket. Without some astounding breakthroughs in material science it ain't happening but people are happy to take investors money to give it a shot.